Optimization is a constant task for website owners. It’s totally required to enhance key aspects of your online business, like speed. High speed is a gold value on the Internet. It really influences your chances of succeeding or not.
Here you have six effective recommendations to speed up your website.
A minimalist website reduces HTTP requests.
A fast website’s loading is vital for users not to get impatient and abandon it. If a site’s composition has too many elements, it will take more time to complete the loading. Remember that an HTTP request is required to load every element (text, images, themes, videos, animations, ads, etc.).
A minimalist and neat website is easier to navigate and so much faster to be loaded. Check how many HTTP requests every page on your site makes and eliminate the excess.
Files’ minification accelerates speed.
Your website’s look is defined by CSS (cascading style sheets), JavaScript, and HTML (hypertext markup language) files. All these files also cause HTTP requests.
Unnecessary items and code (whitespace, format, indentation, line breaks…) are slow to download.
Minification means reducing markups and code in the script files in all your web pages. By minifying, you will remove pointless items and re-write code to make files smaller, therefore faster to load.
Get an efficient caching plugin.
Every request of your website means all the files that integrate it must be asked to a server to be loaded for the user. A caching plugin saves the final view of the website to deliver it faster to every upcoming user and without generating it from the beginning every time.
Media files optimization.
Optimization of images involves different actions that will result in less disk space and bandwidth, lighter, easier, and quicker to load web pages. Resize the dimensions and adjust their quality by compressing them. Choose a light format (JPEG, PNG, HEIF…). Consider helpful resources like the lazy load of images. Images contained in a web page will be loaded until the user scrolls them, not all simultaneously.
Speed DNS response time.
Loading’s speed also involves the time that it takes to answer the DNS lookup. When a user’s browser requests your website, domain name system (DNS) machinery gets engaged. A recursive server will search for the corresponding IP address of your domain. Without it, the site can’t be loaded. If this server finds it in its cache, it will answer the user’s request immediately. If it is not there, the recursive will need to ask another server until it gets the necessary DNS information for loading the website.
Get a DNS service with multiple servers that can cover your target markets’ locations. If your market is Europe, but your DNS server is in the U.S., response time for your users’ requests will take longer than if that server is geographically closer to them. A shorter travel distance of the DNS query means faster loading.
To have multiple servers also will provide you redundancy, 100% up-time. If a server gets down, your website will be available because other servers can keep responding to users’ requests.
Choose wisely your hosting provider.
What you need is enough resources depending on the size and needs of your website. An international business with big loads of traffic will require a faster plan with a lot of dedicated resources. Don’t forget to check the servers’ location. Again it’s key that they are as close as possible to your target market. That way, your website will be loaded fast.
Conclusion.
Fast speed is key to offer a positive experience for users. It influences the way search engines to rank your business. Don’t waste time! Boost your website’s speed, and leave your competitors biting the dust!
